Every child knows the name of Isaac Newton, the greatest scientist who discovered the law of universal gravitation. But not everyone knows that the mathematician and astronomer, philosopher and alchemist Newton actually headed the Royal Mint during the severe financial crisis in England in the 1690s. Fighting against counterfeiters, he came to grips with London's most respected swindler, William Chaloner, and was willing to do anything to track him down and send him to the gallows. In the book Newton and the Counterfeiter, American historian, science journalist and popular science film maker Thomas Levenson reveals the new Newton to the general reader. The portrait of a genius, whose fate is inextricably linked not only with the history of science, but also with the English Glorious Revolution, the Great Recoinage and the formation of the modern financial system, only vaguely resembles the one we are familiar with from a physics textbook.

Dedicated to Henry, who added years to the letter and joy to the years (as his grandfather once wrote in a similar situation), and to Katya, with eternal devotion